SOUTH KOREA. The Shilla Duty Free has hailed the surge in visitor numbers to its Shilla Tipping mobile review platform, which recently hit a cumulative ten million since its launch last September. According to the retailer, 70,000 to 120,000 people use Shilla Tipping daily.
As reported, the platform, which was added to Shilla’s shopping app, allows customers to share product reviews and experiences with others using the mobile channel. It targets the millennial generation in particular.
Shilla called the platform “one of the largest beauty and duty free shopping communities in South Korea”. It features over 50,000 reviews of around 13,000 products. Of the reviews, about 10,000 of them have led to product sales, claimed Shilla, with one review prompting a high of KRW30 million (US$27,000) in additional sales.
Shilla said: “The platform grasped the attention of the millennials with real-time product updates that accompany pictures and videos, seamless customer experience on mobile [and] entertainment with various shopping-related online content.”
Any member of The Shilla Duty Free programme can write product reviews and can receive rewards up to 3% of sales generated by that review.
More than 80% of users are female, said Shilla, with most reviews about beauty products. Around 80% are in their 20s and 30s, underlining the focus on millennials, who Shilla said are familiar with product review platforms.
Shilla Tipping also offers a platform for “star creators” who produce regular content. The company chose 150 of these last year, each of whom produces unique Tipping content one to five times a month for a fixed paid amount.
Shilla said: “These creators receive additional benefits such as preferred brand sponsorship opportunities, invitations to offline events by brands, shopping incentives, educational opportunities in the field, support for content translation services etc. The Shilla Duty Free plans to continue to recruit and support these content creators.”
The Shilla Duty Free is hosting several events in February to build further awareness of the Tipping service. These include a product review event for selected categories, the first review event for products with no previous review, a video product review event and others.
Explaining its thinking about the review platform upon launch in September, Shilla said in a statement: “Shilla Tipping is expected to satisfy the unmet needs of online customers. Product details and reviews in online duty free were too simple and short so online customers had to check other websites or social [networks] to get more detailed product information or reviews. With the Shilla Tipping platform, online customers no longer have to wander around multiple websites for more information. The customers now can easily find product reviews and check out instantly without leaving The Shilla Online Duty Free mobile application.”
